1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a connection information management system and a connection information management method for managing connection information used in communications between IC cards. The present invention also relates to an IC card for use in the foregoing connection information management system and connection information management method.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, IC cards having unique IDs have rapidly become popular. In general, an IC card is inserted into a predetermined slot of a cellular phone or connected to a personal computer, which is connected to the Internet, by the user thereof. Thus, the IC card can communicate with other IC cards, which are similarly connected to other cellular phones, personal computers or the like.
For example, when an IC card is inserted into a slot of a cellular phone, communication using phone numbers is performed. On the other hand, when an IC card is connected to a personal computer, communication using IP addresses is performed. In order to enable such communication between IC cards, terminal devices, such as cellular phones and personal computers, to which IC cards are connected, are designed so that connection information, such as phone numbers and the IP addresses of terminal devices to which other IC cards are connected, is registered in advance.
However, such IC cards have the following problem: when a terminal device having another IC card connected thereto has been changed to another terminal device having different connection information by the user of the other IC card, communication can no longer be performed by using the connection information previously registered for the other IC card.
To cope with this problem, it is considered that each IC card notifies a server of the connection information of a terminal device currently having the IC card connected thereto and that the connection information is managed in the server. However, in the case where an IC card cannot communicate with the server because the IC card is located outside the wireless communication service area and so on, there arises a problem that the connection information of the IC card cannot be managed in the server.